The Sunday Intertitle: Race Day

Obvs Soderbergh’s LOGAN LUCKY should be triple-featured along with LOGAN and LUCKY, which came out close enough to it to be a bit confusing to this old man.

It’s quite nice — the plot is neat (though aspects of the prison break had me wondering how on earth anyone on the outside could know this was possible — yet two guys NOT in prison plan a successful break-out), the characters are fun. Smart script by Jules Asner for some reason credited as Rebecca Blunt. It has Seth McFarlane and I still don’t like anything that guy does, but as he’s playing a creep whose story function is to get punched, he wasn’t too damaging.Little Farrah McKenzie, playing Channing Tatum’s kid, is the star of the show, followed by Daniel Craig, essaying another Foghorn Leghorn voice. (Upon beholding him in KNIVES OUT, my sainted mother declared “You can cut his head off but I’ll keep the rest of him.”) Adam Driver continues to be able to do anything, seemingly.On this one I felt like Soderbergh’s cinematography (rich like OCEAN’S 11 even without the aid of neon) was better than his editing. There are lovely passages like a-lying-in-bed montage where each image bleeds through at different speeds on different sides of the frame — did he do lighting changes on set like in CITIZEN KANE or is it just the wonders of colour correction? But that’s a directorial choice. The actual ordering of images and cutting within sequences didn’t strike me as particularly deft, with scenes dying out on weak notes and a lack of clarity in their linkage. The two deleted scenes included on the DVD should have been in there, also (whereas I recommend the outtakes from OUT OF SIGHT for the sheer “WTF were they thinking?” quality of the bath essence dialogue).

But it’s fun. Almost made me forget this was Trump country and I should hate these people. Well, one shouldn’t hate. (The UK trailer for the film used alternate takes and different versions of gags which made for a snarkier, more Coens-like portrayal of the characters, presumably calculated to appeal more to smug Brits like me.) But, owing to events that overtook the filmmakers, politics does become the trumpeting elephant in the room. Like, if King of the Hill were airing today, it would be a much darker, more unlovely show.

Seven Aside

More from WEEKEND MURDERS director Michele Lupo. SETTE VOLTE SETTE (SEVEN TIMES SEVEN) steals the premise of TWO WAY STRETCH but elaborates it in fun ways. Again, we’re in England, this time 1968 London. A team of seven prisoners (plus tagalong Lionel Stander) with names beginning with B (for some reason) try to break out of prison and back in again, unnoticed, committed a heist while at liberty to give themselves the perfect alibi. And all while the prison staff are distracted by the world cup (Everton versus Sheffield Wednesday, whatever that means).

Entirely gratuitous b&w set

Gastone Moschin from WEEKEND MURDERS is back as the ringleader, Benjamin Burton Brain, and there are cameos from Adolfo Celli and, almost inevitably, Terry-Thomas. Lupo directs with typical frenzy — extreme low angles, Dutch tilts, crash zooms, restless tracking shots, frequent resource to handheld, frenetic cutting…

Because the goal is to make this as touristically British as possible, the heist is carried out with a London double-decker bus as getaway car (Brain keeps it in his suburban garage, impossibly) and the music is very ITALIAN JOB. This is like the Italian cinema’s answer to that national insult. It’s a very affectionate response.

There are no subtitles for this so I cheerfully watched the English dub. The setting and some of the casting (cameo from David Lodge — who is in TWO WAY STRETCH) helps make that acceptable. I’m not sure if Moschin is playing gay or just very posh, but whoever’s dubbing him has decided on the former.

The movie may be derivative but it anticipates the OCEAN’S 11 reboot with a parkour/acrobat guy and a movie screen showing an image filmed in a duplicate set, used to flummox security camera (the prison is a magnificent Victorian panopticon but behind there scenes there’s lots of Bondian tech, appropriate enough since Celli is in charge. He probably had it in his contract.

As with the original OCEAN’S there’s a bitter ending as the plan goes ironically awry, but as with TOPKAPI there’s always the dream of a successful future job — the days of actually lucrative capers are still some way off. Funny, that — nowadays all heists must be successful and you couldn’t get away with the unresolved cliffhanger of THE ITALIAN JOB, the total ruination of RIFIFI or even Sinatra and gang’s long, disillusioned promenade…

SETTE VOLTE SETTE stars Fanucci; Archie Goodwin; Jekyll; Lord Alex Burman AKA Flashman; D’Artagnan, Maciste; Emmanuelle; Major Hitchcock; Emilio Largo; Calibos; Squire Trelawney; Ernest Hemingway (old); and Jelly Knight.

The Impossible Takes A Little Longer…

…two hours and twenty-seven minutes in the case of MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: FALLOUT.

I caught up with Christopher McQuarrie’s two MI films, a bit belatedly. The only thing I’d seen of his was THE USUAL SUSPECTS (THE USUALS, for short), which he wrote. And I dimly remembered that he had one of the two rival Alexander the Great biopics — evidently the wrong one got made.

This guy’s really skilled! He can move the camera to show what characters are thinking. His action is visually coherent, his blocking of normal dramatic scenes (there are a couple) is also dynamic and inventive. He steals from the best, with elan.

Of course, the exciting adventures of the International Monetary Fund Impossible Missions Force are still a step down from those of Alexander of Macedon, and I guess McQuarrie had to recalibrate his industry expectations during the twelve year gap between his directing debut and Tom Cruise giving him another chance with JACK REACHER. Cruise has spoken of wanting each film in this series to have it’s own distinctive director, though maybe that idea was born because Brian DePalma wa s such a grouch on the first film. McQuarrie has broken the mould by being asked back. The time might now be right for him to try something more serious because surely there are limits to what you can express through the medium of punching, kicking, shooting and chasing, in a glossy Bondian fantasy world? I know, it does sound like fun, and as far back as THE USUALS, McQuarrie ha s been inventing a kind of mythic world of unknowable, Mabusian supergeniuses…

The challenge DePalma faced with his entry was to turn a team-based TV show into a star vehicle for one guy, while keeping it nominally about a team. With the later entries, maybe the problem is how to make it feel like anything matters in a series where ludicrous shit is constantly being accomplished on the hoof.

Fiona, having watched Chernobyl, points out that you should never do this with a plutonium core.

“NOTHING in this film is real!” declared Fiona, midway through McQ’s 2nd MI joint. Not a complaint about the pervasive CGI jiggery-pokery (we know TC did enough of his own jumping to hurt one of his little legs, but the bike chase through Paris must have involved more head removals than the Thermidorian reaction — ironic, in a film where people keep swapping faces via those silly masks) but an admiring/exasperated response to the incessant narrative trickery. The “big store” cons so popular in the TV version haven’t been exploited this much in previous franchise entries, but they really go crazy with it here. But they don’t quite overdo it, even if the mission in this kind of hokum is to overdo everything in sight: unlike in OCEAN’S 11, where every moment of jeopardy was followed by a twist revealing that it was all part of the plan and everything was under control, which got monotonous and frustrating (you can, it seems, get TIRED of surprise).

Oh, and I like Rebecca Ferguson’s technique for fighting much bigger men: she climbs up them and hits them from above.